1

3-D Printing

Usage of this technology is increasing rapidly. If you think it can only be successful in tech industry, then you are highly mistaken. One can see its adoption in verticals where you can’t imagine. The size of the

global market, including 3-D printer sales, materials, and associated services is predicted to reach $16.2 bn by 2018, according to independent research company Canalys. Its estimates show the sector stood at $2.5 bn globally in 2013 and will rise to $3.8 bn in 2014. And in five years the company believes the market will grow by over 500% with a YoY growth rate of 45.7%. American designers are now working on 3-D printed cars, while in China and Holland, 3-D printers are building entire houses. The first 3-D printed hamburger was recently created in England, heralding the possibility of a man-made food supply. Apart from this, doctors are using it for printing skin, kidneys, a replica of a beating human heart. The biggest surprise came when NASA, using Zero-G technology, demonstrated how 3-D printers will one day be used in space.

2

Mobile Payments

With ever increasing number of smartphones and tablets, the growth of mobile payments market or commonly known as eWallet market is growing by leaps and bounds. Today consumers have options to

do their banking transaction with just one click on their phone. Thanks to an increasing number of phones with either secure mobile banking apps, and/or Near Field Communications (NFC) chips. Apart

from BFSI segment, one can see non-bank competitors jump in to the mobile payment race, including Google Wallet and Apple’s Passbook to name a few.

This destructive technology has emerged so wide, attracting not only the attention of Indian consumers but also global investors. IDC reports that in 2013, India ranked as the sixth largest smartphone market, after China, the US, the UK, Japan, and Brazil. It predicts that by 2017, India will become the world’s third fastest growing smartphone market with 459.7% growth between 2013 and 2017. Whereas NFC technology is still at a nascent stage in India, but one can see its adoption in rail ticketing, retail outlets, etc.

3

Software Defined Network

With explosive use of mobile, cloud, and video technologies, demands for new performance, capacity, and service have increased on network. But it becomes difficult for IT teams to meet this ever growing demands with their limited network infrastructures.The need for SDI is clear as traditional networks have not kept pace with the improvements we have seen in virtualizing computing and storage—so the major shift brought about by SDI is that the network, storage, and compute has become an equal participant in creating technologically seamless IT organizations that can maximize the deliverables on IT spend. As per IDC, SDN is likely to become a $2 bn market by 2016. The promise of a virtual network infrastructure allowing a business to respond in quick time to changing market requirements is the chief benefit that can be expected from SDN as per IDC.

Experts say that SDN makes the datacenter more customized and efficient. Instead of approaching all applications the same way by using standard, undifferentiated resources, a SDN custom-builds business services by leveraging diverse infrastructure according to workload types, business rules and resource availability. Once these business rules are in place, resources are orchestrated by patterns-best practices that govern how to build, deploy, scale, and optimize the services that these workloads deliver.

4

Enterprise Mobility

In today’s digital world, employees are using devices such as smartphones or tablets, as well as accessing cloud services, to conduct their business on a day-to-day basis. It allows workers to become more productive and gives them the freedom of using their own devices, but has also given birth to new business practices. It has become easier for employees to work outside the office as they can access secure corporate data to conduct daily tasks with the help of enterprise mobility.

The usage of this technology is not constrained to tech industry but also to other verticals. Today with enterprise mobility, a doctor can access patient files from his tablet while on rounds and an executive

can access a presentation from his tablet or phone while traveling.

It is not confined to mobile workers and mobile devices, but also to the mobility of corporate data. An employee may upload a corporate presentation from his or her desktop to a cloud storage service, then

access it from a personal iPad to show at a client site. Though many benefits are attached to it but also creates security risks. Enterprise mobility management products, such as data loss prevention

technologies, are available to help IT departments address these risks.

5

E-health and E-education

E-health technology provides benefits to different sets of people including patients, providers, and health planners. If a patient want to know about their healthcare costs, information about their own

health. Similarly providers want to save time and money by streamlining communications where as health planner want to strengthen relationships with members and providers while reducing the cost of

doing business. All this is possible in just one click. Techniques like improved communication include

provider messaging, access to electronic medical records, and the ability to access information about

alternative approaches to medical treatment. Now patients generally get some minutes of face-to-face

time with their physician and through E-health have access to thousands of healthcare Internet sites

where they can gain unlimited health information and can review the cost and quality of other providers

with their existing ones. Improved efficiency, reduce administrative costs, facilitate communication, and enhance patient care are some of the benefits which are helping this technique to be one of the destructive technology in coming years.

6

Consumerization of IT

In recent years, adoption of consumerization of IT has increased tremendously. It refers to a trend in

which business employees expect to be able to use personal devices to connect to corporate networks.

Today consumers are increasingly using mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers. As a

result, many employees are demanding that their employers allow them to use devices they’ve chosen

and are comfortable using. With this, corporate IT departments are setting policies, platforms, and

security measures to ensure the security of corporate data over a larger number of different types of

devices.

Various research show that the majority of companies surveyed already allow employees to use their personal devices for work-related activities. Consumerization is one such trend that has hit enterprise IT.

In other words, consumerization is a phenomenon that manifests a complete reversal of the direction of technology change. Much of what we have in ICT was invented for the military, then adapted for

commercial business, and then simplified for consumer use. But the reverse trend now prevails.

Technologies are invented for the consumer, they are then adapted for business, and refined for military use. This is one possible characterization of the trend of consumerization, but there exist many others.

7

WYOD

Earlier companies were resisting themselves from adopting bring your own devices (BYOD) when it comes to security. But one particular industry seemingly creating buzz this year: wearable technology.

With introduction of smart watches and glasses it is becoming clear that predictions of a wearable tech revolution in 2014 are likely coming to fulfill. Experts believe that it is right for enterprise to upgrade their company’s BYOD strategies, if they have any to support the entry of the devices into their enterprise.

Every coin has two sides, this phrase goes well with wearable devices. On one hand, wearable technologies like Google Glass, the Pebble Steel Watch, etc, adds additional security risks, but on the other hand wearable devices can provide benefits to workers in different industries, from hands free computing and data collection, to faster communication capabilities. Employers should take a critical

look into the pros and cons of each device and determine how this movement can be a beneficial opportunity.

While there are both benefits and risks involved with these new wearable devices, it’s important for every organizations who are thinking to grab this technology and who will open the gates for their

employees on use of such devices, should start framing right and flexible policies for the same.

8

Gamification

This year we have seen adoption of gamification technology across the verticals. It is being adopted by enterprises who want to achieve their goal by applying game mechanics gamification taps into the basic desires and needs of the users impulses which revolve around the idea of status and achievement.

The research company Gartner predicts that by 2015, a gamified service for consumer goods marketing and customer retention will become as important as Facebook, eBay, or Amazon, and more than 70% of Global 2,000 organizations will have at least one gamified application. These days companies with different sizes whether SMBs or big MNCs have realized its importance. They use gamification to drive desired user behaviors that are advantageous to their brand. There are many technique of gamification, which a company can adopt to increase engagement by rewarding users who accomplish desired tasks.

One can see better use of big data in gamification. It is a powerful tool for motivating better performance, driving business results, and generating a competitive advantage. By capturing and

analyzing the big data on behaviors, businesses can create a more engaging experience that motivates employees and users and can be ahead of its competitor.

9

SaaS

On one side Indian companies are showing signs of increasing focus on core areas thereby increasing dependence on technology whereas on the same time enterprises focused more on RoI.

One of the key benefits of SaaS is the lower upfront cost, which results in lower entry barriers for customers looking to acquire software applications. Moreover, customers do not have to fret about

maintenance and upgradation since they are taken care of by the vendor, helping them focus on their core areas.

The term ‘software-as-a-service’ (SaaS) is considered to be part of the nomenclature of cloud computing, which also include infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), desktopas-a-service

(DaaS), backend-as-a-service (BaaS), and information technology management as a service.

All this are giving birth to Everything as-a-Service (XaaS). All will grow rapidly for small as well as large companies, with many new players in a multitude of business process categories. These services will

help companies cut costs as they provide access to powerful software programs and the latest technology without having the expense of a large IT staff and time-consuming, expensive upgrades.

The SaaS model is gradually becoming significant in the enterprise computing space, particularly for small and medium organizations. It promises lesser TCO and greater RoI.

10

Augmented Reality

This technology has created buzz in the industry. Not only enterprises can be benefited with this but a normal tech user can enjoy this invention. Augmented reality is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. With the help of advanced AR technology the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally manipulable. One can simply aim use its smartphone camera at a crowded street to find the stores who have the exact products you are looking for. Or, when you are in a store, use your phone’s camera and AR app to quickly locate the products you need.

AR has slowly and gradually increased its influence into many spheres of our lives, with the major ones being retail, automotive, medicine, education, marketing & branding, as well as gaming. The global revenue forecast for augmented reality in the consumer electronics market, according to a report by Semico is $600 bn by 2016 whereas 103 mn automobiles will also enjoy the perks of this technology by 2020.

11

Digital Identity Management

In this Internet age every other person is using digital media for their day-to-day working. A critical problem in cyber space is knowing real identity of the individual. Even though there are attributes

associated to a person’s digital identity, these attributes or even identities can be changed, masked or dumped and new ones created. To solve this issue, digital identity management evolved.

With this software both organizations and individuals can manage their multiple identities across business and personal networks. Next generation biometrics integrated into your smartphone, tablets

and other devices, will play a key role in both identity management and security.

12

Internet of Things

In today’s Internet of Things era where everything is connected to the Internet, the ever growing volume and variety of digital data has become the critical success factor that businesses come to rely on. The Internet of Things (IoT) is on the threshold of taking-off in a big way. It’s all set to emerge as a major force in enterprise computing that will expand into a major disruptive trend.

According to experts, the industry is being transformed by platforms such as cloud, big data, mobility, and social businesses. Data explosion with these emerging platforms need to be matched with solutions

that are deployed quickly, more flexible, out-of-the-box, with maximum RoI and efficiency. Experts believe that IoT has all the trappings that will snowball into a major trend and has the ability to disrupt how the Internet is consumed today and might even challenge the very premise of conventional decision making done by humans. Welcome to the world of thinking networks to machine-to-machine

conversations to remote diagnostics to self healing networks. The Internet of Things (IoT), which excludes PCs, tablets, and smartphones, will grow to 26 bn units installed in 2020 representing an almost 30-fold increase from 0.9 bn in 2009, according to Gartner.

13

Advanced Robotics

Advanced Robotics is one segment that brings a lot of promises attached to it. Though its adaption is

less as it was expected but one can see its usage in many verticals. Robot technology is not only entering new industries but it is also entering the domestic field. One can also see its footprint in home security segment automation, where robot technology watches for invaders. If an invader is caught it lets out ascream while calling the police. There may also be robots that will be able to remind you to take your health check up. And you may soon find yourself with some extra hands around the house with robots that can wash windows, vacuum, and even mow the lawn.

Robots are also making their way into the medical field by assisting in high precision sugeries such as gall bladder removals, brian surgeries, and heart bypasses. Robotic cameras are being used in some settings

for diagnostics. Pharmaceuticals are also jumping on the robotics band wagon to use robots for testing quality control by food processors to check for bacterial contamination.

14

Cloud Telephony

In cloud telephony, firm’s office communication equipment and the need to hire someone to keep the on-premises phone systems running is replaced by hosted voice applications, has come up as an

effective tech solution that can help cut working costs, especially for small & medium enterprises (SMEs).

But in other words, cloud communications are Internet-based voice and data communications where telecommunications applications, switching and storage are hosted by a third-party outside of the

organization using them, and they are accessed over the public Internet. Whereas cloud telephony specifically means the voice services and more specifically the replacement of conventional business telephone equipment.

Though the international cloud telephony market is expanding increasingly but experts believe that Indian market is still tough to survive. Among its benefits, lower cost attribute as major driving force for this technology. Companies can cut costs with cloud communications services without sacrificing features.

15

Next-Generation Biometrics

Biometrics is the science and technology of measuring and analyzing biological data. In information technology, biometrics refers to technologies that measure and analyze human body characteristics,

such as DNA, fingerprints, eye retinas and irises, voice patterns, facial patterns, and hand measurements. Today various Biometric authentications such as face recognition, fingerprint recognition, iris recognition, palm recognition, vein recognition, signature recognition, etc, are found to be used in various segments.

The existing methods such as identification documents and PIN are not able to cope up with the growing demand for stringent security, which gives a high growth opportunity for the use of the biometric

technology. This technology is very popular also because biometric characters such as face, fingerprint, hand, and so on cannot be lost, stolen, or easily forged.

According to Biometrics Research Group the global biometrics market will grow to $15 bn by 2015, from its 2012 estimated value of $7 bn. The market for automated fingerprint identification systems and fingerprint biometric technologies account for the greatest share of the global biometrics market and is forecast to continue to be the main source of overall market revenues from 2010 to 2015. This sector is valued at $5 bn in 2012 and is expected to reach nearly $10 bn in 2015.

16

Smart TV Using Apps

This technology is very popular in other countries, but still its adoption in India is pretty less as compared to them. According to a study, nearly 25 mn American households have a smart TV, and by

2015 it is estimated that 50% of all TVs sold worldwide will be smart TVs. With this advanced app, one can watch their favorite television programs on their smartphones, tablets, and PCs as well. And can

access programs far beyond a few local channels. But smart TVs also offer plenty of entertainment options in addition to expanded viewing. Smart TVs stream media, act as gaming platforms, and let you browse the Web on a big screen.

Many players have entered into this field but these app vary from manufacturer to manufacturer since each has its own app store, but there are several that are ubiquitous. With them, your smart TV can

become a home gym complete with personal trainer, a very local lecture hall, a gigantic jukebox, and a large-as-life videophone.

17

Autonomous and Near Autonomous Vehicles

Facebook’s taking over of Bengaluru-based startup, Little Eye Labs marked the social networking giant’s first acquisition in India. The startup was maker of a software tool that helps Android developers to measure, analyze, and optimize their app’s performance. The deal size was said to be in the range of `60-90 crore.

It was reported that with the acquisition the Little Eye Labs team would move to Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California. The startup would get access to Facebook’s world-class infrastructure and would work on improving performance of the company’s apps.

Industry analysts were convinced that the move is in line with Facebook’s mobile strategy despite the fact that a significant number of its worldwide users access the social networking site on their mobile devices.

It also brought good news for the startup ecosystem in India that is coming up in a big way and is being recognized globally. The fact that a global giant like Facebook was ready to take over just about an year

old startup was quite indicative of the level of innovation being displayed by small Indian tech companies.

18

Security Analytics

Scope of big data analytics has been moved one step ahead towards security analytics. Once the data has been captured, monitored, and analyzed properly; it can be used to understand security threats

which enterprises were not able to detect earlier with their traditional SIEM approach. With the use of security, one can get clear understanding of what’s going on within a company’s network, but also how external data sources can help predict upcoming attacks. Some experts have sounded the death knell forSIEM, while others see the fusion of big data technologies and SIEM as the next evolution, taking security analytics to the next level.

It will help SOC team to quickly determine how an attack happened and it will reduce the ‘attacker free time’—the time between the attacker entering the environment and being detected in the

infrastructure—and to put measures in place to prevent similar future attacks.

19

Unified Storage

Unified Storage has all the trappings of a trend in making and is all set to disrupt conventional storage topologies. As a concept, unified storage has been talked about for years, but its increase adoption can

be seen over the last year.

With increasing data, growing trend, and momentum towards big data, the performance downers can be intelligently managed. For instance, when we talk about big data, the success depends on making

data into actionable insights and profit from such insights. So an enterprise, in order to derive benefit from big data, need to adopt unified storage as it makes more sense than banking on heterogenous

storage with scattered-across pools of data. However, unified storage alone will not help realize big data, but it is clearly an enabler.

Experts say that there have been discussions around cases where unified storage can be useful for a big data analytics application that needs data from heterogenous storage sources like file and block storage.

In such scenarios, the emphasis is really more about improved storage manageability than a case for big data.

20

Big Data Analytics

This technology has created huge hype in the market. Companies from all the sectors will have to adopt this technology sooner or later.

Big data analytics refers to the process of collecting, organizing, and analyzing large sets of data to discover patterns and other useful information. Not only will big data analytics help you understand the

information contained within the data, but it will also help identify the data that is most important to the business and future business decisions.

Many big data projects originate from the need to answer specific business questions. With the right big data analytics platforms in place, an enterprise can boost sales, increase efficiency, and improve

operations, customer service, and risk management.